The World’s Greatest Hyperbole Lesson Plan

Teach Figurative Language With Flocabulary

Listen to Flocabulary’s Figurative Language song. You’ll learn all about hyperbole, as well as metaphors, simile and more.

Look everyone! We caught the biggest fish in the sea!

Last week, Allie the Alliterative Albino American Alligator helped you teach alliteration. This week, let the biggest fish in the sea guide your Hyperbole lesson. If you teach figurative language, literary terms or rhetorical devices, tune in each Wednesday for a new term, with examples for hip-hop, literature and history.

Hyperbole

Definition: A purposeful exaggeration or overstatement. In Greek, it literally means to overshoot.

Why Writers Use It: Even though the statement might not be exactly true, hyperbole can create emphasis or also make something sound funny.

Hip-Hop Hyperbole Examples

“If you cats wore my chain for a month you’d be hunchback.” – Cassidy

“I’m the best that ever did it the best that’s gone’ do it.” -Cassidy

“I’m so ahead of my time my parents haven’t met yet.” -Big L

Hyperbole Examples in Literature

If thou dost slander her and torture me,
Never pray more; abandon all remorse;
On horror’s head accumulate;
Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed;
For nothing canst thou to damnation add
Greater than that.
-Othello, describing his anger in Othello by William Shakespeare. (Listen to our Othello song.)

“It’s a slow burg–I spent a couple of weeks there one day.” -Carl Sandburg

Other Examples

“I’m the most irresponsible person in the world.” -Mike Tyson

I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.

I tried a million times to find a good list of hyperbole examples online, but found absolutely nothing. So I wrote this post.